Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Here is the likely reason that Rob Riley and Liberty Duke sued my wife and tried to have her arrested


Carol Shuler, from her Facebook page
If Rob Riley and Liberty Duke had no factual basis for including my wife, Carol, as a named defendant in their defamation lawsuit against me and Legal Schnauzer, that means they had no lawful grounds to seek her arrest for alleged contempt of court--in a case that did not involve her. So why did they do it anyway?

Let's look at the evidence, and use a little common sense, to arrive at a likely answer to that question. Here are a couple of unsettling hints: (1) Our house, or rather a desire to scour the contents of our house, was the driving motivation behind the ugly events of fall 2013; (2) Carol and I, and our pets, were at significant risk of being killed.

As we noted in a previous post, suing Carol (or "Mrs. Schnauzer," as we most often call her here) is like suing tennis great Steffi Graf for something her husband, fellow tennis great Andre Agassi, wrote in his 2009 autobiography, Open. It's absurd, nonsensical, unlawful, and a classic example of what lawyers like to call "vexatious" litigation. That means it has no purpose other than to harass and annoy, and if our case had a legitimate judge other than Claude Dent Neilson, Riley and Duke would have been hit with sanctions.

Including Carol in the Riley/Duke lawsuit probably had a purpose other than to harass and annoy. Our guess is that it was designed to steal and terrorize, which makes it even more unlawful--perhaps even criminal. Why do we say that?

For starters, let's stipulate that Carol, because she was named in the lawsuit, was targeted for arrest. Jay Murrill, from the Riley Jackson law firm, sent her a letter after I had been in jail for several weeks, stating that he and his client/boss never had any intention of having her arrested. But Carol and I both know that is a lie.

When I was being arrested on the night of October 23, 2013, dragged from our home with pepper spray dripping off of me, I heard three or four officers on the scene talking about trying to arrest Carol. She was asleep in an upstairs bedroom, and somehow managed to remain asleep while deputy Chris Blevins beat me up and left debris all over the floor in our garage two stories below. I could hear officers talking about trying to nab Carol ("the wife") that night, but they apparently were reluctant to knock down our front door to get at her.

During the first week I was in jail, Carol reports that deputies made three more trips to our house--at least one of them at night, with lights being shined into our windows. They again pounded on the front door and yelled something, apparently trying to get Carol to come to the door so they could make off with her. Wisely, she did not fall for it and managed to get word out to various news outlets about my arrest. During one night-time visit, Carol was on the phone with Andrew Kreig, of the Justice-Integrity Project, so he was able to get a sense of the siege she was under.

Only when the story began to spread, with the help of Andrew Kreig, Peter B. Collins, and many other journalists, did the threatening visits to our house stop.

So what was the purpose of this terror campaign against someone who, as Riley and Duke seemed to admit in court documents, had nothing to do with writing or editing the posts in question--or any other Legal Schnauzer posts, at the time?

It took me awhile to arrive at an answer to that question, perhaps because of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) I've experienced since being released from five months in jail--apparently the first journalist in American history to be incarcerated under such circumstances. By the way, I'm not loosely throwing around the term PTSD; multiple medical professionals have diagnosed me with the disorder, and I am receiving treatment for it, although I feel its effects every minute of every day.

Carol also has been diagnosed with PTSD. Perhaps of more concern at the moment, she has not been able to receive medication for a thyroid condition, and the lack of treatment puts her health at serious risk. That's what happens when you've been cheated out of your jobs--and your health insurance--kicked out of your house, and forced to move to an unfamiliar area.

Here is the likely answer to why Riley/Duke named Carol in the lawsuit and sought her arrest; it seems abundantly clear to me now, after months of wondering, "Why on earth did they do that?"

Carol and I now are convinced that the Riley/Duke lawsuit was all about our house--or rather the imagined contents of our house.

In the fall of 2013, I was conducting research on a number of sensitive, and potentially explosive, topics regarding the tribe of white, elitist conservatives who more or less run Alabama. Some of that research led to posts about U.S. Circuit Judge Bill Pryor and his ties to 1990s gay pornography via badpuppy.com--a series that drew national and international attention, given Pryor's status as a controversial Bush-era appointee who was known for his numerous anti-gay public statements and actions.

Bill Pryor, at badpuppy.com
The Pryor-porn connection was not the only touchy subject I was exploring. There were three or four others, and some have not made it to print--yet. But political/legal elites knew at least some of what I was working on because I had conducted, or sought, interviews with individuals connected to certain topics. I also had gathered evidence in various forms--paper files, digital and hard-copy notes, court documents, tape recordings, video recordings, photographs. We essentially had turned one room of our home into the Legal Schnauzer Anti-Corruption Research Center.

As noted here previously, the Riley/Duke complaint had almost nothing in common with a standard defamation lawsuit. It didn't seek a trial, it didn't seek a jury, it didn't seek monetary damages, it didn't seek discovery to prove the material in question was false or defamatory. That's because it wasn't about defamation or a civil dispute (lawsuit)--it was about having me thrown in jail.

And it was about having Carol thrown in jail. Why her, too? That's where common sense enters the picture--and it took me several months to regather my wits in order to figure this out.

What happens when the two human occupants of a house--we also have two much loved and slightly spoiled kitty kats--are arrested and thrown in the slammer? The house suddenly becomes free of human barriers and open to thorough "investigation."

With the help of law-enforcement officials or "security specialists," who can easily pick locks and comb through possessions, anyone could go through our house from top to bottom. They could rifle through everything we owned--and even steal items that held a special interest for them.

We feel certain they would have found plenty of interest, especially in one room. That's why it was so important to arrest Carol. With both of us stashed in jail cells some 20 miles away, our house would have become an open book. And it's important to keep this in mind: The Riley/Duke lawsuit file was sealed, so the public would not have known the case even existed--we would have vanished, with the general public having no way of knowing what happened to us. Readers likely would have started asking questions when my blog suddenly stopped, with no explanation, but authorities easily would have been able to fend that off.

Carol's ability to escape abduction almost certainly threw a major wrench into the plans. But individuals close to Rob Riley had reason to know that our house contained information that could be highly damaging to their interests. So they had another trick up their sleeve--a Plan B, if you will.

We will spell that out in an upcoming post, and I think this much will be clear: Carol and I have been the victims of organized crime. And that's because Alabama is a dysfunctional, red state that is run by a band of white, "conservative" elites who, when threatened, resort to tactics that are criminal and organized.

How serious is this? Well, Carol and I were the targets of a conspiracy to kidnap. And had we both been abducted, and we failed to produce the desired information, I think we likely would have been killed; our pets almost certainly would have been killed. And with the lawsuit file sealed, it's likely no one ever would have known what happened to us. The local press probably would have portrayed our disappearance as "suicides" or an "accident."

If that doesn't scare you, no matter where you live . . . well, this story isn't over. Wait until you hear about Plan B.


(To be continued)

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Boy, this is scary, and I don't think you are overstating matters. There is pure evil in the world, particularly when it comes to southern politics.

Anonymous said...

I have no doubt that Ralph Stacy and Bob Caviness were murdered. So it's not at all hard for me to believe that you and your wife might have been murder victims. So glad the two of you made it.

Anonymous said...

Paragon Source.

Everything will come back to that.

legalschnauzer said...

Thanks for the kind words, @8:00, but I'm not sure we've made it yet. I think we still are in danger, maybe even more so than before.

Anonymous said...

I still wonder about the Major Bashinsky suicide. That never has seemed right to me.

legalschnauzer said...

It never has seemed right to me either, @9:14. I don't pretend to know how Mr. Bashinsky died, but I've read the autopsy report and published it here, and there clearly is no proof in that report of suicide. At the very least, that should have remained an open investigation. If that didn't turn up strong evidence, then cause of death should be classified as unknown.

That was a highly questionable death that authorities dispensed with as quickly as possible, for some reason.

Anonymous said...

From the bottom, regarding paragraph three; during Campbell Robertson's earlier Alabama visit he was provided with evidence in good faith, then never heard from again, wouldn't even answer his phone, which lends support to same.

Anonymous said...

So you think the purpose of your arrest, and the attempted arrest of your wife, was to make your house available for those who might want to search your research materials? Hmmm . . . I had never thought of that, but it does make some sense.

Insider said...

You were arrested because of your reporting on Bill Pryor and gay porn. That story has been known for some time among Alabama elites in politics and law, but it wasn't supposed to get out. Pryor's protectors wanted you and the Missus out of your house because they were convinced you had additional nude photos of the judge. Based on the hullabaloo caused by your publishing of the one photo, bringing others to light would have been devastating to Pryor and those who benefit from his presence on the federal bench. They were after your additional photos of Bill Pryor from badpuppy.com because they know there are about a dozen in circulation--or perhaps I should say in existence.

legalschnauzer said...

If that's what they were after, Insider, they didn't get them.

Anonymous said...

I think they were planning to frame you and Carol for a crime, by placing drugs or child porn or something in your house.

legalschnauzer said...

That's a very interesting thought, @10:19. They clearly wanted both of us out of our house for some reason, which would have given them unfettered access to do something untoward and illegal. I'm not sure there is a limit to how low these folks will go.

But having me (and maybe Carol) framed for a crime and shipped off to prison would have been a good way to get a troublesome journalist out of the way. No doubt they would have gotten away with that, too.

Josh said...

Kidnap victims always are at risk of being murdered. That's why it's one of the most heinous of all crimes. If you truly were the victims of a kidnapping, then you definitely were at risk of being killed.

Anonymous said...

What makes this really evil in my opinion is that the case was sealed. As you say, the public would have had no idea what happened to you and your wife. This was a conspiracy to commit kidnapping, which succeeded, and a conspiracy to commit murder, which didn't. Where in world is the FBI?

legalschnauzer said...

Good point, @1:53. Two big questions I've had about this for a long time:

1. Why did they sue Carol?

2. Why was the case file sealed?

There was no legal justification for either one. But I think we've opened the door to the truth today. (1) They sued Carol to justify arresting her and making sure she was out of the house, too; (2) They sealed the case file so no one would ever know what happened to us.

A commenter above suggested that maybe the Riley Gang was planning to plant evidence of a crime in our house, and I would not doubt that at all. Either way, this plan was darker than most mentally healthy people can understand--and it was criminal.

Wayne said...

Can you get a restraining order on the jerks and I hope Carol sues their pants off.

legalschnauzer said...

Wayne, I don't think a restraining order would do much good. No. 1, this is not a case of active stalking or harassment. These people don't necessarily do that; they just come and abduct you. Two, this involves individuals in law enforcement and the legal world. To have any effectiveness, a restraining order has to be enforced by a competent court, and I'm not sure there is one in Alabama. The courts are a huge part of the problem.

I think your second idea is much more potent. Carol, and I, do indeed need to sue their pants off.